Music

The first time Broadway director and choreographer Sergio Trujillo heard about Real Women Have Curves, he didn’t pay much attention. His husband, producer Jack Noseworthy — with whom he runs Truworthy Productions, focused on finding Latino stories to empower the community through musical theater — had watched the America Ferrera-starring 2002 movie and asked him to see it, thinking it would make “a really interesting musical.”
“Mostly because he’s been growing up with my family — my mother, my sisters, all of them — and he said he saw something in it,” Trujillo, who was born in Colombia, tells Billboard Español. “I was so absorbed with so many other projects, that I sort of saw it but I didn’t pay attention.”

One night, he decided to give it another shot, learning that it was originally a play by Josefina López – which he read immediately. “I was like, ‘Oh, my God, this is a musical! Mostly because the characters were bigger than life. The language was so buoyant, it was like music. The story was beautiful,” he recalls joyfully. “And there is a phrase that [the protagonist] Ana says in the play — ‘Women are most powerful when they work together’ — that resonated with me deeply, more than anything else.”

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Set in the Boyle Heights section of Los Angeles in 1987, Real Women Have Curves follows Ana García, a cutely chubby, uber-smart daughter of immigrant parents who struggles between her ambitions of going to college and the desires of her mother for her to get married, have children and oversee the small, rundown family-owned textile factory. The show deals with gender politics and the Latina immigrant experience, with immigration agents messing with their husbands, judgment from other characters, and dreams that for many undocumented seem simply impossible to achieve.

Trujillo, both as an immigrant and as one of the few men in his family, felt a profound connection. “I thought, ‘What a great way to,’ first of all, in the mission to empower our community, ‘to empower women, but also celebrate all of my mother and my sister and my aunts, all of the women that have made so many sacrifices so that I could have the life that I have.’” And that is what he did.

Formally opening on April 27 at the James Earl Jones Theatre, Real Women Have Curves: The Musical is now nominated for two Tony Awards at Sunday’s show: best original score, by Latin music star Joy Huerta (half of the Mexican pop duo Jesse & Joy) and Benjamin Velez, and best performance by an actress in a featured role for Justina Machado — who in a full-circle moment plays Carmen García, the mother of Ana, more than 30 years after playing Ana herself at the Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago.

The fact that both Huerta and Machado received nominations this year is remarkable. The former is a Grammy-winning singer who had never done theater before. The latter — whom Trujillo worked with more than two decades ago and was completely convinced she was his Carmen — was initially reluctant to accept the role because she couldn’t see herself in it.

“When I did the play when I was 20 years old, it was just a different kind of role. And when I saw the movie, you know, with the wonderful, iconic Lupe Ontiveros [as Carmen], I just didn’t think that was something that I would want to do or that I would fit with,” Machado explains to Billboard. “I had to be talked into coming and doing a 29-hour reading — one of the first things you do when you’re developing a new musical or a new play.”

So the actress, known for TV series like Six Feet Under and One Day at a Time — and whose only previous Broadway credit was as a replacement for In The Heights‘ Daniela for a couple of months in 2009 — flew from Los Angeles to New York.

Once there, she not only found a less serious, less judgmental Carmen, but also a set of inspiring songs — from the soaring coming-of-age tune “Flying Away” to the humorous “Adiós Andes,” sort of a funny ode to menopause which she performs brilliantly during the show. (You can listen to the full album of Real Women Have Curves: The Musical here.)

“Really, what made me fall in love with the role was the music,” Machado admits. “I was like, ‘Oh my God, I love this music.’ But I had to be convinced that I was the person to play this role.”

And as much as she loved the music, the music creators loved her. Huerta, who was recruited early on as a songwriter and was there during that first reading of the show, recalls how the actress made her feel. “Justina was the first person I remember saying, ‘This is a non-negotiable for me,’” she tells Billboard. “I had never felt – I mean, I had felt it with music, but seeing a person perform that really made me forget about the world? I was like, ‘Please, please make sure to get her. … What do you have to do to make this happen?’”

“Sergio really was the one, he really kept on,” Machado says of what convinced her. “They were very persistent, and I’m so very happy that they were. … I never thought that I would be revisiting this play again in another form, and it really works as a musical. It’s almost like it should have always been a musical. It’s just so beautiful.”

Although it did not receive a Tony nomination for best musical or best actress, despite widespread acclaim for the show and for Tatiana Córdoba, who plays Ana in her Broadway debut, the cast of Real Women Have Curves will be performing at the awards ceremony on Sunday night.

Trujillo hopes the effort he’s put into representing Latinos on Broadway doesn’t go unnoticed by his target audience. “I’m on this mission to empower our community, to try to create content and stories in which they can see themselves,” he says. “But I need them to come to the theater. I need Latinos to do their part and support us.”